He delivers a page-turning, emotionally absorbing tale – despite a surfeit of medical detail (the book’s title is a phrase from the Hippocratic oath). Verghese, an acute observer, vividly evokes life at the hospital and in the bustling capital. When political events take a dangerous turn, forcing Marion to flee to New York, he finds himself becoming entangled with his past and forced to come to terms with it. The “elder” twin, Marion, narrates the tale, at the heart of which is an act of betrayal that breaks the strong bond between him and his brother Shiva. As the boys come of age, Ethiopia’s turbulent politics – executions, rebellions, coups – play out sometimes on the periphery of their personal story and sometimes at its very centre. This big, bittersweet, beautifully written novel, set mostly around the hospital, follows the family’s fortunes over five decades. Fortunately for the twins, the two doctors who deliver them become their loving, adoptive parents. Their father, a well-respected British surgeon, disappears, abandoning the boys. In 1954, a young Indian nun working at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa dies while giving birth to identical twins.
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